The 100 best films of the 1990s: 50 – 26

After you’ve read through this part of our count­down of the best films of the 1990s, check out num­bers 100 – 76, 75 – 51, and 25 – 1.

They said that William S Bur­roughs wrote books that could not be trans­posed into oth­er media, but that may be the very rea­son that David Cro­nen­berg took on the chal­lenge. This fea­ture-length drug chimera sees Peter Weller’s low­ly bug exter­mi­na­tor take a trip to the Inter­zone where he assumes the iden­ti­ty of a pri­vate detec­tive in a space dom­i­nat­ed by insec­toid type­writ­ers and sad-eyed Mug­wumps. The film fol­lows thrilling and intu­itive nar­ra­tive paths while embrac­ing sur­re­al imagery and plung­ing us into obscure, sub­jec­tive dream states, and it is a supreme­ly bold fol­low-up to the rel­a­tive­ly crowd-pleas­ing likes of The Fly and Dead Ringers. Though drug movies tend to skew towards the com­ic and the absurd, this one actu­al­ly stands as one of Cronenberg’s most strange­ly melan­choly movies. David Jenk­ins

The name Ross McEl­wee is not that well known, and that’s because his films have sel­dom played in prop­er cin­e­ma rota­tion. But while they are cer­tain­ly made for a small, dis­cern­ing crowd who are open to the wry philo­soph­i­cal and cinephilic mus­ings of a true south­ern gen­tle­men, it doesn’t mean they are not some of the great doc­u­men­taries of the mod­ern era. Time Indef­i­nite is a dev­as­tat­ing­ly per­son­al account of a film­mak­er attempt­ing to come to terms with his own mor­tal­i­ty. He is enthralled by the prospect of bring­ing up his young son, but also has to deal with oth­er per­son­al tragedies that arrive from the oth­er branch­es of the fam­i­ly tree. With a skele­ton crew, McEl­wee ush­ers in his per­son­al life as the film’s sub­ject mat­ter, but does so in a way which is nev­er egre­gious or nar­cis­sis­tic. Quite the oppo­site: his self-dep­re­cat­ing wit and wis­dom is a thick salve for the soul. DJ

The open­ing cred­its sequence of the Coens’ gang­ster-noir runaround, Miller’s Cross­ing, sees a hat float off through a for­est clear­ing, an unchased McGuf­fin dreamt up by an unchaste mob­ster. Tom Rea­gan (Gabriel Byrne) loathes los­ing his head­wear and his dig­ni­ty, but he strug­gles to hold on to either for long. Caught up in a con­vo­lut­ed web of lovers and mur­der, he relies on his hard-boiled sur­vival skills – manip­u­la­tion and dirty tricks – and achieves mixed results. In typ­i­cal Coen-broth­ers fash­ion, mis­takes and mis­in­for­ma­tion abound. In such moments of con­fu­sion, we recall Tom’s flut­ter­ing fedo­ra. It seems to promise answers to his many ques­tions but, blow­ing in the wind, its own mean­ing proves just as elu­sive. John Wadsworth

It’s our firm belief that true great­ness can­not be mea­sured in shiny trin­kets. As far as movies are con­cerned, awards are essen­tial­ly arbi­trary and cer­tain­ly not an accu­rate indi­ca­tor of qual­i­ty. That said, it real­ly is crim­i­nal that Den­zel Wash­ing­ton didn’t receive every major act­ing gong going for his tow­er­ing lead turn in Spike Lee’s biopic of the tit­u­lar black activist. Mal­colm X was a com­plex man and a con­tro­ver­sial pub­lic fig­ure whose life cap­tured in micro­cosm America’s long strug­gle with race and class – Wash­ing­ton embod­ies this as per­haps no oth­er actor could. Adam Wood­ward

The French film­mak­er Arnaud Desplechin does good chat. He has the nat­ur­al abil­i­ty to turn banal con­ver­sa­tions into enthralling spec­ta­cles, and that’s down to his incred­i­ble abil­i­ty as a writer of dia­logue (mel­liflu­ous, lit­er­ate, but nev­er too much so) added to the fact that he works with awe­some actors. The stars of this wind­ing auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal epic from 1996 include Math­ieu Amal­ric as the charm­ing, change­able Paul Dedalus (Desplechin’s screen alter-ego), and the always-scin­til­lat­ing Emmanuelle Devos as his more cul­ti­vat­ed on-off lover, Esther. There’s no handy three-act struc­ture or cosy res­o­lu­tion – My Sex Life… is a hard­core, out­spo­ken slice of life, and it thank­ful­ly includes lots of the real­ly juicy stuff. DJ

As the old inter­net meme goes, this one is back in the news. Not because of War­ren Beatty’s unfor­tu­nate foul-up at the 2017 Acad­e­my Award cer­e­mo­ny, but due to the fact that this out­spo­ken and provoca­tive 1998 film is about a sui­ci­dal Repub­li­can sen­a­tor who decides that he’s going to tell the unvar­nished truth. And what’s more, he’s going to spit it out in hip-hop cou­plets. And the peo­ple are going to love him for it. As star, direc­tor and co-writer (along with Jere­my Pikser), Beat­ty is some twen­ty years ahead of the curve in his all-guns-blaz­ing des­e­cra­tion of cor­rupt politi­cians, toad­y­ing lob­by­ists, and a sys­tem built on the crooked foun­da­tions of greed, racism and lies, lies and more dirty lies. DJ

Badass doesn’t even begin to describe John Woo’s glo­ri­ous­ly overblown pis­tol opera, in which a self-styled ​“super­cop” named Tequi­la (Chow Yun-fat) gives him­self the con­sid­er­able task of tak­ing down the local arms car­tel run by peach-suit­ed bas­tard, John­ny Wong (Antho­ny Chau-Sang Wong). Ammo is no object as he leaps and dives through tea-shops and dock­side fac­to­ries whack­ing out an almost end­less suc­ces­sion of gurn­ing goons and min­ions. He tries out all man­ner of firearms, and even­tu­al­ly set­tles on a giant pump-action shot­gun, with explo­sive results. This is an exhil­a­rat­ing dirty bomb from peak-era Woo – his sole aim as a direc­tor is to make the next action set-piece more insane, more vio­lent, and more unfor­get­table than the last. And, dammit, he suc­ceeds with fiery gus­to. DJ

Is it pos­si­ble to be killed by cin­e­ma? Not just emo­tion­al­ly, but phys­i­cal­ly too? Lee Kang-sheng – actor and muse of direc­tor Tsai Ming-liang – plays a young man who unwit­ting­ly agrees to become an extra on a film shoot, pos­si­bly to impress a woman. He is asked to pre­tend to be a corpse float­ing in Taiwan’s Tam­sui riv­er, and he just has to float in the pol­lut­ed water for a few sec­onds. The film then plays out like an lugubri­ous urban night­mare, as he devel­ops an itch in his neck that he can’t quite scratch, and it dri­ves him towards mad­ness and beyond. And that’s before we’ve met his par­ents. Tsai is one of the prog­en­i­tors of so-called ​“slow cin­e­ma”, and rather than that unhelp­ful tag point­ing towards abject drea­ri­ness, it’s more that this mas­ter direc­tor allows you to (lit­er­al­ly) drink in all the mys­te­ri­ous detail he del­i­cate­ly places on the screen. DJ

It’s a cry­ing shame that the actor Dan­ny Glover might end up being remem­bered as the cop sit­ting on a toi­let that’s been wired to explode. In Charles Burnett’s haunt­ing dis­sec­tion of the mod­ern black Amer­i­can fam­i­ly, To Sleep with Anger, he deliv­ers a per­for­mance so sub­tle, so pre­cise­ly cal­i­brat­ed and so utter­ly in tune with the tone of the mate­r­i­al, that it should real­ly go down as one for the ages. The film bares a light resem­blance to Pier Pao­lo Pasolini’s clas­sic The­o­rem, and sees a strange inter­lop­er (played by Glover) enter into a fam­i­ly and man­age to tease out all the fes­ter­ing resent­ments and unful­filled dreams. On the sur­face it’s a small, inde­pen­dent dra­ma made via mod­est means by the pio­neer­ing Bur­nett, but it’s also the result of care­ful moviemak­ing craft that is pow­ered by con­fronta­tion­al ideas and a sense of bare­ly-con­cealed rage. DJ

The best biopics evade pure­ly fac­tu­al retellings of a life to cre­ate a more sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence of their sub­ject, tak­ing them out of school books and into the realm of every­day real­i­ty. Mau­rice Pialat’s penul­ti­mate film fol­lows this prin­ci­ple to an almost painful degree. The last few days of the renowned Dutch painter’s life are told prac­ti­cal­ly with­out any dia­logue, the sounds of the French coun­try­side dom­i­nat­ing the sound­track. The sense of place is over­whelm­ing, and Van Gogh him­self – won­der­ful­ly played by French pop singer Jacques Dutronc – does not try to stand out from it. On the con­trary, the man seems engaged in an inti­mate rela­tion­ship with nature, which the world is privy to via his vivid paint­ings. Pialat’s cam­era cap­tures Van Gogh and his art in unvar­nished shots that only empha­sise their strength and radi­ance. This con­flict between the rhythm of every­day life and that of his­to­ry in the mak­ing per­me­ates every frame, and it is beau­ti­ful. Ele­na Lazic

This tremen­dous and unher­ald­ed domes­tic dra­ma from Aus­tralian direc­tor Rowan Woods is a film in which a sense of hair-trig­ger vio­lence is float­ed into its every, beau­ti­ful­ly-judged frame. A young, bog brush-haired David Wen­ham stars as thou­sand-yard, ex-con berserk­er Brett Sprague who is released from chokey on parole and heads direct­ly back to the fam­i­ly nest. Every­one prays for a new, becalmed and tol­er­ant Brett, but it becomes swift­ly appar­ent that his time inside has cul­ti­vat­ed rather than cur­tailed his fes­ter­ing resent­ments. Toni Col­lette turns in a spiky ear­ly per­for­mance as his jilt­ed lover, and the film itself becomes an exer­cise in watch­ing-through-your-fin­gers as you wait just to see how it all goes wrong, and how bad­ly. And it’s one of those films that, when the cred­its roll up the screen, you’ll have to choke your heart back into place. DJ

Krzysztof Kies­lows­ki made a career of chal­leng­ing the very worst of human behav­iour with unwa­ver­ing com­pas­sion and under­stand­ing. It seems fit­ting that his last ever film, and the final chap­ter of his icon­ic Three Colours tril­o­gy, explores one of the most painful of human traits: the capac­i­ty for deceit and betray­al. Through the char­ac­ter of young, ide­al­is­tic mod­el Valen­tine (Irene Jacob) and the dis­il­lu­sioned judge Joseph Kern (Jean-Louis Trintig­nant), the Pol­ish mas­ter takes us on an emo­tion­al jour­ney where appear­ances are treach­er­ous and coin­ci­dences go unno­ticed. Cul­mi­nat­ing in a moment of tran­scen­dent opti­mism and grace, this poet­ic mas­ter­piece on for­give­ness some­how lost the Palme d’Or in Cannes to anoth­er ensem­ble dra­ma of sorts, Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fic­tion. EL

We, like you, utter­ly despise the term ​“game-chang­er”, and do every­thing in our mea­gre pow­er to avoid using it, par­tic­u­lar­ly when dis­cussing the joys of the nick­elodeon. How­ev­er, the term seems nec­es­sary when refer­ring to Daniel Myrick and Eduar­do Sanchez’s shaky cam faux-doc – a bolt from the blue which altered the ter­rain for genre cin­e­ma and made an ungod­ly sum of mon­ey at the box office. Build­ing a mythol­o­gy around the film before its release, the mak­ers worked hard to build con­di­tions that would make poten­tial view­ers believe that every­thing they’re see­ing is real. Luck­i­ly, they dis­cov­ered a clutch of feisty young actors who were in on the game, and so deliv­ered a film in which inno­cent folk­loric super­sti­tion and gueril­la stu­dent film­mak­ing join togeth­er in an pulse-quick­en­ing wood­land night­mare. DJ

Al Pacino’s big, kind eyes say more about Car­l­i­to than his explana­to­ry voiceover: the ex-con­man, fresh out of prison, wants to believe again in the beau­ty of life. Direc­tor Bri­an de Pal­ma employs his trade­mark volup­tuous film­mak­ing to trans­late the hope­ful pas­sion that Car­l­i­to man­ages to bring back to his girl­friend, mak­ing this his most ten­der and roman­tic film. Yet the director’s pes­simistic view of human­i­ty hasn’t left him as Car­l­i­to can’t sim­ply for­get the code of the streets, nor can he rely on the law to pro­tect him, cor­rupt­ed as it is by self­ish greed and ram­pant dis­trust. Even the most gen­uine and over­whelm­ing love can’t sur­vive when redemp­tion remains but a dashed dream. Manuela Laz­ic

From things that are as intan­gi­ble as mend­ing heartache to those as real as a ceram­ic pot steam­ing with hot ramen, the Japan­ese are at their most awe-inspir­ing when focused on a sin­gle enti­ty in a nuanced way. This film finds mae­stro Hirokazu Koree­da apply­ing that atten­tion to detail to the after­life: when you die you can choose one mem­o­ry from your exis­tence to bring to the oth­er side. Ethe­re­al, mov­ing, and exquis­ite­ly beau­ti­ful in its sim­plic­i­ty – like all great Koree­da films – it is a sub­tle explo­ration of the palimpsest that mem­o­ries leave on your soul. Gabriela Helfet

Film lovers the world over wait­ed 20 long years for Ter­rence Malick’s fol­low-up to his rav­ish­ing big-sky opus, Days of Heav­en. And boy, the big man didn’t dis­ap­point. Per­haps the most philo­soph­i­cal movie ever released by a major film stu­dio, The Thin Red Line is less a war film and more a pro­found exis­ten­tial odyssey – not that the direc­tor told his ensem­ble cast as much: ​“It was phys­i­cal, it was dirty – no show­er in a week in the bush, dig­ging our own trench­es and stay­ing up half the night on look­out, it was the real thing,” actor Dash Mihok has recalled of the expe­ri­ence. A film with grit under its fin­ger­nails and poet­ry in its heart. AW

The leap between Por­tuguese direc­tor Pedro Costa’s 1989 debut fea­ture, Blood, and his 1997 fol­low-up, Bones, is a giant one, but not in the most obvi­ous direc­tion. He dis­played a daz­zling tech­ni­cal bravu­ra in that impas­sioned open­ing mis­sive, yet every­thing in this fol­low-up is tamped down to the point of poet­ic innocu­ous­ness. He cap­tures the young dere­licts of the grot­ty sub­urb of Lis­bon called Fontain­has, and observes as drug habits and a gen­er­al lack of oppor­tu­ni­ty drag them down to rock bot­tom. The man­ner in which he films his actors dis­plays the patient qual­i­ty of a mas­ter por­trait painter. Yet these are not con­ven­tion­al­ly beau­ti­ful depic­tions of human frailty. The images he pro­duces are haunt­ing and indeli­ble, as if his cam­era looks straight through the skin and into the soul. DJ

Dra­con­ian cen­sor­ship laws in Iran push film­mak­ers to look beyond point-blank state­ment-mak­ing to mat­ters more pro­found and poet­ic. In this strange film, vet­er­an direc­tor Mohsen Makhmal­baf opts to restage an event for which he was sent to prison as a youth – the stab­bing of a police­man dur­ing a protest. A Moment of Inno­cence presents an impul­sive, life-alter­ing act, but ques­tions the pow­er of cin­e­ma to ever be able to amply recre­ate the nuance and feel­ings that exist­ed in a bygone past. It sounds dead­ly seri­ous, but as with much of the director’s work, pro­ceed­ings are shot through with lev­i­ty and humour. The police­man on the busi­ness end of Makhmalbaf’s knife actu­al­ly became an actor since the inci­dent and, bizarrely, is dis­cov­ered when audi­tion­ing for one of the director’s films. DJ

Long, heav­i­ly impro­vised rehearsals were inte­gral to the process of mak­ing Naked, a col­lab­o­ra­tive exer­cise that ensured that the char­ac­ters and inter­ac­tions that make up Mike Leigh’s arrest­ing dra­ma remained unadorned in their emo­tion­al hon­esty. At its cen­tre is David Thewlis’ bru­tal­ly cyn­i­cal gad­about, John­ny, an intel­lec­tu­al on the run from the past com­mit­ted to con­vinc­ing oth­ers of the futil­i­ty and malev­o­lence of the human race. John­ny is so steeped in hatred for him­self, the world, and the peo­ple who inhab­it it, that it spreads to every cor­ner of the film. His odyssey through the hell­ish land­scape of the city con­nects him with oth­er lost souls, des­per­ate­ly seek­ing to sur­vive with­out fam­i­lies, jobs, love or hope. Johnny’s motor-mouthed nihilis­tic rants have the elo­quence of pul­pit ser­mons, but are ground­ed by the authen­tic­i­ty of Thewlis’ mas­ter­ful per­for­mance. Jack God­win

There’s a sig­nif­i­cant shad­ow cast over mod­ern cin­e­ma by Mar­tin Scorsese’s mob epic, a film that is end­less­ly re-watch­able even as we fol­low Hen­ry Hill’s (Ray Liot­ta) increas­ing­ly per­ilous descent into crim­i­nal­i­ty. Despite arriv­ing 30 years into the director’s career, it is the cen­tral ref­er­ence point for Scorsese’s dis­tinct film­mak­ing style. The direc­tor builds Henry’s life through small inter­ac­tions with a rich­ly detailed cast and extra­or­di­nary dia­logue often devel­oped from impro­vi­sa­tions. The long track­ing shot through the Copaca­bana club demon­strates the allure that this life holds for Hen­ry, the scale of which is com­mu­ni­cat­ed entire­ly through Scorsese’s for­mi­da­ble cam­er­a­work. There’s no con­dem­na­tion or glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of Henry’s crim­i­nal lifestyle, but razor-sharp aware­ness that allows us to enjoy his exploits again and again. JG

If films only ever focussed on like­able char­ac­ters, they’d be bor­ing. Yet not every direc­tor can make a flawed per­son worth watch­ing for hours. Whit Stillman’s debut fea­ture con­sists entire­ly of obnox­ious peo­ple, cen­tring as it does on a group of prep­py New York­ers dur­ing gala débu­tante sea­son: not even the not-so-elite Tom Townsend (Edward Clements) or the gen­tle Audrey (Car­olyn Fari­na) remain pris­tine. Yet by high­light­ing the exis­ten­tial ques­tions con­stant­ly on the minds of these beau­ti­ful peo­ple, Still­man avoids sen­ti­men­tal­ism to instead find touch­ing humour in their at once ele­vat­ed yet some­what pet­ty dis­cus­sions. Eschew­ing melo­dra­mat­ic and upping the wit­ti­cism quo­tient, the film sees rela­tion­ships gen­tly evolve until these priv­i­leged young­sters sud­den­ly realise their attach­ment to each oth­er – and the audi­ence to them. ML

Jack­ie Brown is prob­a­bly Tarantino’s least bom­bas­tic film, but also, more inter­est­ing­ly, his most roman­tic. Jack­ie (Pam Gri­er) belongs to the Blax­ploita­tion tra­di­tion, but the direc­tor updates the phys­i­cal prowess and Manichaeism typ­i­cal of these hero­ines into a more real­is­tic shell of endurance and wit. Besides smug­gling arms mon­ey for her boss Ordell (Samuel L Jack­son), mid­dle-aged Jack­ie isn’t look­ing for trou­ble. But when com­pli­ca­tions occur, it’s to each their own, until she finds in bail bonds­man Max Cher­ry (Robert Forster) an unex­pect­ed part­ner in crime, and maybe more. Cross­cut­ting between the dis­turbed peo­ple around her, Taran­ti­no cre­ates a med­ley of oppos­ing atmos­pheres through which he presents the title char­ac­ter as a com­plex woman, at once strong and sen­si­ble, inde­pen­dent yet emo­tion­al. ML

A minia­ture treat from the ​‘Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge…’ TV series made for French tele­vi­sion, as Claire Denis whisks heady mag­ic from a wisp of a set-up. It’s 1965 and two girls liv­ing in the Parisian sub­urbs want to lose their vir­gin­i­ty, and so saunter off to a near­by US army base look­ing for some action. What they find is Vin­cent Gallo’s kind­ly Cap­tain Vito Brown who, shall we say, takes them on a unique jour­ney. More than a con­ven­tion­al dra­ma, the film is an exam­ple of how Denis is able to for­mu­late an atmos­phere, and here it’s propped up by a suc­ces­sion of ​’60s radio alt-rock hits from the likes of The Ani­mals, The Trog­gs and Nico. A small but per­fect­ly formed gem. DJ

There’s hard, there’s dou­ble-hard, and then there’s ​“Beat” Takeshi Kitano. When talk­ing about the ​“seri­ous” film work of this Japan­ese stand-up and TV celebri­ty, con­ver­sa­tions begin with his mat­ter-of-fact 1989 debut, Vio­lent Cop, and end with 2003’s sword-swish­ing crowd pleas­er, Zato­ichi. Smack dab in the mid­dle of that peri­od is his mas­ter­piece, Hana Bi, a film whose sto­ry makes a habit of turn­ing on a dime from hushed, Zen-like con­tem­pla­tion to brain-splat­ter­ing vio­lence. It’s a melo­dra­ma of sorts in which a Christ-like cop (played by a per­pet­u­al­ly pok­er-faced Kitano) resorts to crime as a way to care for his old injured cop bud­dy and his dying wife. Every shot is cal­cu­lat­ed to per­fec­tion, with each edit slic­ing through the action with almost sur­gi­cal pre­ci­sion. And Joe Hisaishi’s swoon­ing score is the cher­ry on the top. DJ

“How long has it been since you fired a gun at a man, Will? Nine, 10 years?” ​“Eleven.” Clint Eastwood’s revi­sion­ist west­ern is set in a world in which things are not only bad, they are also sad, and more than a lit­tle pathet­ic. William Munny (East­wood), a retired gun­slinger rid­den with guilt for his vio­lent past, retrieves his gun for one last job and imme­di­ate­ly finds him­self faced the same ego­ma­ni­a­cal and hos­tile machis­mo he had hoped to leave behind. The spec­tac­u­lar deaths and shootouts that myths are made of recov­er here their full grue­some­ness and dis­heart­en­ing sense of waste. East­wood and the flaw­less sup­port­ing cast – Gene Hack­man is a high­light – deliv­er some of the most rich and nuanced dia­logue of the decade, every line heavy with deeply mis­er­able impli­ca­tions. It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. EL